The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
As is known, an implantable pulse generator, a cochlear implant, a deep brain stimulator, and such medical devices that are inserted into the body of human, animal, etc. maintain communication and power transfer with external devices by magnetic coupling for establishing a low-frequency magnetic field by using an inductive link coil. In particular, communication data and electric power are transferred from the external device to the implantable medical device by an induced electromotive force between a primary coil of the external device and a secondary coil of the implantable medical device. The implantable medical device having a secondary coil is configured with dozens of circuit components which respectively need power consumption to perform their assigned functions.
Here, each of the circuit components may be divided into a data communication section and an operative section. Medical devices have a rechargeable internal battery for supplying electric power to the respective circuit components.
In general, the implanting nature of such medical device inevitably limits the overall device size which in turn restricts the maximum allowable dimension of the battery to be employed. The limited battery capacity generally proportional to the small size results in undersized and low-capacity implantable medical devices which suffer from frequent recharging. This is the major factor in diminishing the usability of the implantable medical devices.
Therefore, a low power system for implantable medical devices is needed in practice for reducing the power consumption of the device components to the minimum by securing the most battery capacity available.